A review by laci
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

4.0

Yet another of the long list of books I had been meaning to read for so long I completely forgot _why_ I wanted to read them.
However, when I started much of that came back to me. My expectations were high, and they were all met. Though the book is from the sixties, I think it shows no signs of age. All of the tropes were handled well, including the difficult ones like teleportation or time travel or the relationship dynamic between a strong-headed man and a woman just as stubborn and smart.

I also like the sci-fantasy setting of the novel, even though it did not directly influence the setting of this book, it seems. (Though this is only the first book, so who knows.) It basically reads like a fantasy novel, except right at the beginning, there is an introduction that takes a page and a half to summarize what is going on with the world, and mentions among other things that Pern, the planet in question, was colonized by humans so long ago that, because no contact with other planets was kept, not even legends about this remain. They live in complete isolation and ignorance.

But the intro is not the only thing taken from the sci-fi playbook. The characters approach their situation smartly and, in a true scientific (or sci-fi-like?) fashion try to analyze their options, test their predictions and adapt.

Among other deftly explored ideas were (possible minor spoilers)

Spoiler

That with a threat that only repeats in cycles of 200 years, and not _every_ 200 years at that, you're going to run into problems of keeping people even _believing_ that this threat actually exists. And by choosing the dreaded Threads to be mindless spores, the author can focus on the protagonists completely, without sounding like something important is being neglected.